Get the inside scoop on jobs and careers with Vault career guides. Yale Law School Buzz Book is your complete resource to jobs, careers, interviews and recruiting.
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Yale Law School Buzz Book Get the inside scoop on jobs and careers with Vault career guides. Yale Law School Buzz Book is your complete resource to jobs, careers, interviews and recruiting. |
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Yale Law School Buzz Book Welcome to the first edition of Vault's Yale Law School Buzz Book. In this new and unique guide, we publish extended excerpts and sample admissions essays from surveys of students and alumni from Yale Law to bring you the inside scoop on its law program. The survey comments cover the following areas:
The guide is intended to serve as a complement to other references to law schools currently available that utilize school-reported data. Unlike those guides, Vault's Buzz Books (which also include the Law School Buzz Book, Business School Buzz Book and College Buzz Book) are composed almost entirely of information provided directly to Vault from students and alumni.
We received comments from Yale Law, which we have included comments next to appropriate survey sections, offset with a different font and indented to be easily recognizable as school-provided comments. Corrections within the body of the comments are enclosed in brackets. Yale Law also provided separate narratives that have included them at the end of each chapter, under the heading "The School Says."
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Status: Current student, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 9/2003-Submit Date
Survey Submitted: August 2004
Top grades, top LSAT scores, lots of luck. Everything has to be aligned for you to overcome the statistical odds against being accepted. There is no interview process, so the application needs to stand on its own. It should be the best possible application that you can muster. Edit the essays and revise, and rewrite and repeat. Choose your recommenders carefully. Make certain that they will be effusive.
Status: Current student, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 9/2003-Submit Date
Survey Submitted: February 2004
Like other schools, Yale relies heavily on GPA and LSAT. Have high numbers is the point of entry--then worry about letters of recommendation and essays. Yale is special in that the professors all read a selection of student files and rate them, so in that respect, the intangibles are probably more important than at most schools. Perfect that personal statement.
Admissions: The School Says
Yale Law School seeks to enroll a diverse and talented student body with a variety of backgrounds, experiences and professional aspirations. The small size of the school--approximately 185 students in each entering class--requires an extremely selective admissions process. No one aspect of an application (such as the LSAT score or GPA) is determinative; we base our judgments on the entire application.
All applications are first read by the Dean of Admissions. She submits approximately 20 to 25 percent of the applications to the faculty, based on a holistic assessment of the applicant's academic and professional promise. Each application that is sent to the faculty is evaluated by three readers. The entire faculty, including academic faculty, clinical faculty and associate deans, read applications. Faculty readers rate each file on a scale of 2 to 4, based on criteria of the faculty reader's choosing. The scores from the three faculty readers are combined to determine which applicants are admitted. The law school also maintains a small waitlist over the summer.
Academics: Students Speak
Status: Current student, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 1/2002-Submit Date
Survey Submitted: May 2005
Yale Law School is about learning because you love to learn. It's also about an inimitable degree of respect for students. Students are respected enough as talented and extraordinarily capable people on whom the program is not interested in imposing shame or unnecessary suffering. This is the reason why there are no grades. The whole system works only because YLS has assembled such a small group of highly, highly overachieving students. The result is that students can navigate the program at their own speed and in search of their own treasures.
Employment Prospects: Students Speak
Status: Alumnus/a, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 9/1999-5/2001
Survey Submitted: March 2006
Finding a job at a law firm is too easy. Most graduates clerk for at least a year after school.
Status: Alumnus/a, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 9/2000-5/2003
Survey Submitted: March 2007
Yale Law grads can go pretty much anywhere and do just about anything they want. If you aren't making a six-figure salary once you graduate, it's because you chose not to. The biggest dilemma is deciding which of the many incredible offers to accept.
Quality of Life: Students Speak
Status: Alumnus/a, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 9/2000-5/2003
Survey Submitted: March 2007
The best! Yale Law School is an amazing community. It has topnotch facilities and, more importantly, amazing people. I wish I could go back!
Status: Alumnus/a, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 8/1996-6/1999
Survey Submitted: February 2005
The law school has just been beautifully renovated. It is a Gothic Disneyland with computer access at every seat. It's a city block of new and state-of-the-art classrooms, auditoriums and dining facilities.
Social Life: Students Speak
Status: Alumnus/a, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 9/2000-5/2003
Survey Submitted: April 2004
I met my husband at Yale Law! There are always a few couples from each class who start dating first or second year and end up married or engaged to each other by graduation--it's uncanny how many couples are formed at the law school. Aside from dating, the social scene is what you make of it; you can't go clubbing, exactly, like you could if the school were in New York, but you can have great parties with friends and nice meals out, and attend plays at Yale Rep or the Shubert. I was never without something to do on a weekend night--having good friends from school ensures that.
Status: Alumnus/a, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 9/2000-5/2003
Survey Submitted: March 2007
One of my professors joked that Yale Law School was the embodiment of "revenge of the nerds." In all seriousness, Yale Law School is an incredibly welcoming and open community. I can think of no better place to spend three years.
